OPPORTUNITY AND OUTCOME: The Two Equalities

By YouveBeenGreeked | Some Random Thoughts. | 29 Jan 2025

Everyone wants equality. At least, people who aren't complete dick-weeds want equality: to be able to live in a society where people aren't judged or unjustly acted upon for unrelated and/or immutable characteristics - seems like a fair definition to me.

And history's proven that people have different visions of what equality means, and more so how to achieve the most equality possible. To them, at least.

One key difference is that there are, in essence, two different types of equality: the equality of opportunity, and the equality of outcome.

An equality of opportunity is giving everyone a fair head-start in life, allowing everyone to start the race of life on equal footing. Their abilities in the "race" may vary, but they will all have the opportunity to begin on equal footings.

An equality of outcome, however, states that no matter how people have performed in a certain avenue, everyone will be rewarded equally - everyone gets the same out of life irrespective of the journey they've taken.

From what I can tell, equality of opportunity is the fairest; any failings in getting to the end goal of whatever it is you're doing are as a result of the fault of yourself, so other people are not affected because of the personal failings of one person.

Equality of outcome, on the other hand, states that no matter your ability levels, you will earn the same out of "x" activity/job than someone else who may be better than you. This encourages exploiting the system in order to gain what is not earned.

Much like the welfare system: At most, it should be there as a safety net for those unfairly done to in life so they have a base to get back on their feet. What it's used for instead, and certainly in large part at least, is to give free, unearned money to those who choose not to use said-money wisely. Statistically, around 40% of poverty in the western world is attained via choice - that is, choosing not to be wealthy, and making conscious, poor life decisions with regards to personal finances... that's a stat I saw somewhere a couple of years ago, so give-or-take. It's a lot, basically.

Equality of outcome means that those who work harder get less of a share than their labour deserves, and those who don't work hard earn more than their labour deserves.

A society based on equality of outcome would dictate that these people should get the same amount of goods from the system as someone who works hard and smart for twelve hours a day, non-stop. And whichever way you cut it, that's not right.

This lil meme best visualises it, I think.

... which is why, in my humble opinion, communism is a terrible idea.

The collectivisation of a state based on wealth and class, Communism is built upon the notion that everyone deserves, no matter what, an equal share out of life, often preying on those who are successful just because they have reaped plenty from the plenty that they sow... if that makes sense.

This form of government, at first at least, sounds pleasant, but its implementation has always failed.

And not just failed, but created some of the largest mass graves in human history: anywhere from 40 to 100 million in China since the revolution, and anywhere from 15 to 40 million in Soviet Russia. Millions more in Cambodia, Poland, the Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Angola, and so on... and those numbers are outside of war!

It arguably makes communism the deadliest thing... ever. Or at least a contender for that title. And whatever way it's cut - by a sane person - that's not good. No amount of "B-but the GDP numbers in those years were bussin'!" can undo the mass graves collectivism like this has caused.

Essentially, those who disagreed with the system were shunned, targeted, denied food and resources, sent into camps, or in several cases, just killed outright - the ends justified the means.

(I've used "communism" in a fairly broad stroke, lazily lumping it with Socialism and Marxism, since it is the end goal of the latter two, so I hope this is understood.)

Death tolls like these are inexcusable.

It does raise the interesting query: is the concept of the individual more important than the concept of the collective? For instance, is the notion of a tree more important than the notion of the forest?

Well, I'd answer this with logic: you can have a tree without having a forest, but you can't have a forest without the individual tree(s) - one is necessary for the other to exist, and never the other way around. So, I'd argue the tree is more important than the forest.

But that's a very Plato-versus-Aristotle-level debate which I may discuss another time - there, got another Greek history reference in... can't help myself.

Like what was said in Alice in Wonderland: